When was the last time you had a really hard decision to make. Maybe it was whether to accept a new job offer. Perhaps it was an important decision about the direction in which to take a project, or maybe it was something in your personal life, like whether to leave a relationship. Decisions can be hard, but founder of ever Note Phil Libbon says that hard decisions fall into two distinct categories, and it's really important before making a big decision to work out which of these two categories
the decision falls into. My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium. And this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. On today is my favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out my favorite tip from that interview. In today's show, I speak with Phil Libbin about what he has learned about the difference between difficult and unpleasant decisions.
That's probably one of my favorite kind of things that I've that I've learned that I've figured out about myself. I found that whenever I think, oh man, that's a really hard decision, like that's a hard decision. Whenever that happens. Whenever I feel like something's a hard decision, I like a little red flag goes off and I ask myself, is it hard like it's difficult to know what the right answer is?
Or is it hard like it's unpleasant?
And usually the vast majority of time, when I forced myself I think through that.
I'm like, oh, yeah, I know what the right answer is. It's just unpleasant.
So probably ninety percent of the decisions that I perceive as quote unquote hard, they're not actually difficult to know what the right answer is. I know what the right answer is. They're just unpleasant. They're scary. There's something about him that that's bad. And once I kind of identify which one it is, then then things become clear.
Not easy, but clear.
Obviously, if a decision is unpleasant, you should still do the right thing, regardless of whether it's pleasant or unpleasant.
You just have to deal with the unpleasantness.
But I think what I used to do is really conflate those two things, and I think a lot of people conflate that. I think a lot of people conflate difficult decisions with unpleasant decisions, and they pretend that it's hard to know what the right answer is when really it's just an unpleasant answer. Uh. And yeah, that's that's like a that's probably my favorite, like management hack or life hack.
It's just like something's a hard decision hard how.
And when you have an unpleasant decision to action? How do you approach that conversation?
Uh?
It mean it's very situation right, it depends on what's what's unpleasant about it and how, and but ultimately you just you have to do the right thing and you have to do the right thing. Like I very much dislike words like fearless. I think for a while it seems to it seems to be receding, it seems.
To be in remission.
But for a while, like if you years ago, everyone was like something something fearless, something something, it was like it was.
Way overused word.
And I think fearless is really like people. Fearless people are just genuinely stupid. They really don't have any fear. Then they're clearly too dumb to understand what the danger is. I never try to be fearless. Being brave is about experiencing fear. Like if you're not afraid, you're not brave.
You're just dumb, so you have to you know, you experience the fear and the trepidation, and you allow yourself to experience and you just do the thing that you have to do anyway, because that's that's the right thing to do. It's not easy, but it's simple.
Ever since hearing this tip, I think about it all the time. When I'm faced with a big decision, the very first thing I ask myself is whether it's difficult or just unpleasant? And this has saved me an inordinate amount of time and headspace when it comes to decision making.
If you're looking for more tip to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot code. That's how I Work dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support
from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Matt Nimba, who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.